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From Anne C.:

I am currently working on an essay on the subject of attitudes toward death and aging, and would appreciate it greatly if readers could take a few moments to fill out the poll in this post.

Given the quality of her work, you should all head over and help the creative process. Pass the word along, too - no such thing as too many passers-by for poll.

Attitudes towards death and aging, and changes in those attitudes, shape the future of healthy life extension and the longevity research it depends on. If everyone was perfectly comfortable with aging to death (and the inevitable frailty, helplessness, pain and suffering), then it seems self-evident that there would be little or no funding for meaningful anti-aging science. If everyone desired health and longevity, and acted rationally on that desire, then the aging research community would be afloat upon a sea of banknotes.

Neither extreme reflects reality of course; attitudes are complex and contradictory. Opinions depend on how you ask the question. People faun over the worthless trinkets of the "anti-aging" marketplace, looking for the silver bullet that doesn't exist, while refusing to believe that science to actually repair the damage of aging is comparatively close at hand. Folk defend the existence of death and aging, while seizing upon straws in the wind to mask their wrinkles.

It's a strange world, populated by strangers - and it'll be the death of us all if we don't get our act together. Real, working technologies that can rejuvenate the aged - exactly, literally, rejuvenate - are only a few decades away. If the science is funded, if the research community forms, if the public support and understanding exists.

Or we could all keep giving money to the makers of wrinkle-reducing products and sellers of magical thinking about aging - I'm sure they'll be glad to take our funds, as they age to death alongside the rest of us.

As always, the choice of which future you want to live in, and how much of it you see, is very much up to you.

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